MySpace is for losers

The Washington Post reports:

Teen Web sensation MySpace became so big so fast, News Corp. spent $580 million last year to buy it. Then Google Inc. struck a $900 million deal, primarily to advertise with it. But now Jackie Birnbaum and her fellow English classmates at Falls Church High School say they're over MySpace.

"I think it's definitely going down -- a lot of my friends have deleted their MySpaces and are more into Facebook now," said Birnbaum, a junior who spends more time on her Facebook profile, where she messages and shares photos with other students in her network.

From the other side of the classroom, E.J. Kim chimes in that in the past three months, she's gone from slaving over her MySpace profile up to four hours a day -- decorating it, posting notes and pictures to her friends' pages -- to deleting the whole thing.

"I've grown out of it," Kim said. "I thought it was kind of pointless."

Such is the social life of teens on the Internet: Powerful but fickle. Within several months' time, a site can garner tens of millions of users who, just as quickly, might flock to the next place, making it hard for corporate America to make lasting investments in whatever's hot now.

MySpace is one of the most wildly successful sites in recent years, amassing 124 million profiles and transforming teen life online during its 2 1/2 years of existence. The site functions like a cross between a diary, e-mail program and photo album where content can be shared with friends, whose pictures appear on a member's profile.

One key measure of a site's popularity is the amount of time a user stays on the site. Tracked over time, such usage data for older networking sites frequented by young people show how popularity gradually rises then falls, like an inchworm's back.

Take Xanga, the hot social networking site before MySpace: In October 2002, the typical Xanga user spent an average of 1 hour and 39 minutes a month on the site, a figure that declined steadily, reaching only 11 minutes last month, according to Nielsen-NetRatings. Friendster, another older site, hit its first usage peak of 1 hour and 51 minutes in October 2003, and then hit another peak of 3 hours and 3 minutes in February 2006. But last month, the average user was on Friendster for a mere 7 minutes.

MySpace usage ramped up heavily during its first year and a half, hitting 2 hours and 25 minutes in October last year. Then it dropped to about 2 hours and held relatively steady there for the past year. Facebook, a younger networking site, is still on a gradual incline, reaching 1 hour and 9 minutes last month.

It's hard to make an online audience stick. Most Internet services are free and compete for a viewer's time, which most sites then try to parlay into advertising dollars. The more time someone spends on a site, the more ads they see. The successful sites engender habits among their users, but users can -- and historically have -- defected to other services for any number of reasons.

The high school English class cites several reasons for backing off of MySpace: Creepy people proposition them. Teachers and parents monitor them. New, more alluring free services comes along, so they collectively jump ship.

The relatively short lifecycle of a popular site is a terrifying prospect for companies like Google Inc., which this month spent $1.65 billion in stock to acquire the Internet's latest grass-roots favorite, year-old YouTube, whose popularity Google hopes to harness as a loyal video audience.

To a youth market composed of teens like Kim and Birnbaum, MySpace is just the latest online fad. Before MySpace, the place to be was Xanga, and before that, Friendster, MiGente and Black Planet.

"They're not loyal," Ben Bajarin, a market analyst for Creative Strategies Inc., said of the youth demographic. Young audiences search for innovative and new features. They're constantly looking for new ways to communicate and share content they find or create, and because of that group mentality, friends shift from service to service in blocs.

Better ROI from YouTube video than Super Bowl spot

Advertising Age reports on Dove's Evolution ad (above):

Think Dove's "campaign for Real Beauty" generated a ton of buzz for relatively little expense? You haven't seen anything yet. Unilever's Dove brand has generated more response from its YouTube 'Evolution' spot than from its Super Bowl commercial.

With not a penny of paid media and in less than a month, "Dove Evolution," a 75-second viral film created by Ogilvy & Mather, Toronto, for the Unilever brand has reaped more than 1.7 million views on YouTube and has gotten significant play on TV talk shows "Ellen" and "The View" as well as on "Entertainment Tonight." It's also brought the biggest-ever traffic spike to CampaignForRealBeauty.com, three times more than Dove's Super Bowl ad and resulting publicity last year, according to Alexa.com.

Sorrell says internet ad spend should rise

The Guardian reports on WPP chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell's statement this morning:

In Britain, the web is set to account for 14% of advertising spend this year, ahead of radio, outdoor and even national newspapers, and double the global average.

Sir Martin said the web's importance would continue to rise, citing research from Google that 20% of people's time is spent online.

"there's going to be a reapportionment of share. Google said we spend 20% of our time online, so in theory, and I stress in theory, that's where the internet market should go. It shouldn't just be 14%, it should be more than that."

For those of you that missed it, here's the original BBC report on Google's research and if you do nothing else, read this Guardian article from August - some highlights:

The online world is scratching its head over the disparity between the internet's growing audience and its share of advertising budgets.

Of the 54.5 hours a week the average Brit spent watching TV, listening to the radio, reading newspapers and magazines and surfing the web last year, 10.7 hours were spent online. That means 20% of all media time attracted only 9.8% ... of advertising cash. And in the crucial 16- to-34-year-old bracket, the figure for online usage is much, much higher.

"There are certainly some large brands that really do not yet get this and see where it fits. As for ad agencies, some really get it and some just want to milk the TV market for everything it's worth while they can."

Online display ads increase paid search effectiveness by 250%

Seth Godin brings news of some interesting research from Yahoo:

If you run banner ads, one study for Harris Direct shows that you can increase your brand awareness about 7% after a reasonable buy of banner ads. The kicker? In the study, Harris did the banner buy and watched the number of clicks to their contextual ad (you know, the text ads) go up by 249% over the next week.

crayon - a new marketing company

Contagious rather breathlessly cover the launch of crayon:

The company’s definition eludes traditional marketing categories: in Neville’s words, "We’re neither an agency nor a consulting practice as is traditionally defined. What we are is whatever you want or need us to be. I like to think of us as a true mash-up that combines the best in traditional and new thinking about marketing, advertising and PR."

The company aspires to be a 100% Web 2.0 venture, one that claims to be the world’s first New Marketing company, one whose focus is unambiguously set on the world of blogs, virtual worlds, podcasts, and experimental marketing.

It is interesting to see a company embrace new marketing wholeheartedly from its inception – we’ll be staying tuned to see what kind of work comes of the union.

Feeding back on creative

Paul Colman on evaluating and feeding back on creative work. Worth a read, regardless of what roles you play.

Transmedia planning & brand communities

Jason Oke, of Leo Burnett Toronto, on transmedia planning & brand communities:

Seeing the same thing executed across a bunch of channels isn't really the most interesting use of each medium, and the best ideas are often built to really leverage the strengths of a particular channel (like Bravia's gorgeous use of film, or using the social elements of blogs and Flickr and YouTube to tease the new ad). So talking about ideas as separate from the media they will exist in is a bit silly and can miss out on the most creative opportunities. Media-neutral leads to media-neutered.

But more importantly it's also missing a key factor: social relationships. I've been thinking about social relationships a lot recently, and how we tend to underestimate or miss them altogether. Marketing tends to think of people as individuals. We target individuals, trying to change individual minds and behaviours. Most of our models focus on individuals. And in research, when someone says "I don't like it but my sister would" we discount that. We say "thanks but today I'd just like to hear what you think." We make people write their answers down so they're not biased by what others think. But this is a problem because people don't exist as individuals, we are highly social beings. People form opinions and make decisions informed by what their friends / spouse / family / colleagues think about things. People talk about brands and media and yes, even sometimes ads with other people.

So fortunately Faris and Ivan suggest a new model, which they call transmedia planning. The gist of it is that rather than using different media channels to communicate the same idea, you can use each channel to communicate different things. Everything is still tied together by the same brand strategy or narrative, but each channel does what it does best, rather than bending to fit an idea that's not really built with any particular channel in mind. Each channel is strong and self-contained enough to live on its own, but can then be pulled together into a greater brand narrative. The most interesting part is that this pulling together doesn't necessarily have to be done by one person - social relationships can help forge those connections, forming a brand community that shares and builds on each others' experiences with the brand. I've seen the advertising, you've been to an event, she's tried the product, he's had a good experience with an employee, and we all compare notes. So the model looks like this

Faris mentions Jenkins' example of the media franchise spawned by The Matrix - the three films, the Animatrix series of short films, the video games, the comics. Each have different (but overlapping) parts of the story, different pieces of the puzzle, and each stand on their own, but you can put them all together to understand the whole Matrix universe better. Another media franchise that's done this well is the TV show Lost, and the various websites, wikis, conspiracy theories, and books that it has generated. In the world of brands, he uses the example of Audi's Art of the Heist campaign [an alternate reality game], but I think the big brands like Axe/Lynx, Nike, Dove, Apple, etc all work this way. They put lots of things out there, not necessarily expecting every person to see every piece, but creating enough interestingness that people will talk and eventually hear about pieces they haven't seen from someone else. And of course, social media means that these discussions are easier and do not necessarily have to be face-to-face or even in the same part of the world.

I really like the transmedia planning model, because I think it addresses those two weaknesses of media-neutral planning: ignoring that different media are better at different things, and that people are social beings. And by putting a brand community in the middle, it also forces us to think about whether we are in fact making brands and communications which are interesting enough for a community to form, and for people to want to talk about our communications.

The idea of brand communities solves one issue that we sometimes run into when attempting to create complex and layered communications - the pushback that we shouldn't put details that everyone (or at least most people) won't or can't get. This is often combined with research findings that indeed, "most people didn't get this reference you were trying to make." This kind of thinking dumbs down communication into the lowest common denominator. But with the brand community model, that ceases to apply - as long as someone, somewhere will get it, then lots of details and references can work. Whoever notices it will likely tell others about it, because the fact that they figured something out reinforces their ego, status and self-image, and because the tools to widely spread that knowledge are now readily available. So instead of talking down to everybody, we can talk up to everybody, by giving many different groups something that makes them feel intelligent for getting a subtle reference. And we give them a reason to have multiple conversations about the brand.

Still, the challenge for brands is to not just put in detail for detail's sake, but to use it to truly make the brand more interesting, to give brand users something they will enjoy noticing and talking about. So maybe that is a new starting point we should set out on our briefs: does a brand community already exist, or will this communication do something interesting enough to create and support one?

Islandoo

You probably won't have heard of Islandoo, or of the company behind it, Mint Digital, based in Vauxhall. Paul Kelbie in the Independent:

It started life as a website where wannabe reality-television participants could post their audition clips. After less than six weeks, Islandoo.com, a site for would-be contestants for Channel 4's Shipwrecked, has become an internet phenomenon to rival the social networking site MySpace.

In its short life, Islandoo.com has attracted more than 18,000 profiles, more than 1.5 million comments from participants and more than 10 million page views.

Islandoo.com asks wannabe participants to upload pictures and videos that are available for all visitors to the site to view. The most popular are then put to the vote every Friday, the winner gaining an audition for the show.

Shipwrecked gets tens of thousands of applications. Islandoo uses Web 2.0 techniques to let the fans filter the best candidates to the top - it's worth checking out some of the 'islanders' that have subsequently been called for audition, such as joeyboy135 and cat17.

However, the community has obviously taken on a life of it's own.

Burnsybaby, Islander:

"This site is more addictive than crack"

Gabsy, Islander:

"I'm literally just doing this and making a cup of tea roughly every 45 minutes... MySpace has already got me by the balls and now this!"

Mint Digital's Andy Bell:

It is famously difficult to predict how a community will interact with a piece of software. What has astounded us is how friendly Islandoo is. As I write, our newest islander (our 9744th) is a girl named melodyblue. She joined Islandoo 12 minutes ago. She already has 12 comments and 9 fans.

Our recent research suggests MySpace is like a pub where most people chat to their existing friends, boys ogle girls and occasionally you bump into someone new at the bar. By comparison, Islandoo is the world’s friendliest party. As soon as you open the door, dozens of people want to say ‘hi’ and start a conversation. It is great buzz (and, anecdotally, a great way to meet people).

The flip side of this is 'fan spam'. Islanders have quickly realised that a good strategy is to fan as many other islanders as possible - there is a good chance you’ll get fanned back, increasing your prominence.

It will be fascinating to see how it develops.

Update: Will McInnes:

Islandoo proves that the development of crazy cool new online communities is just starting, and that it's totally do-able for the right client, the right project, the right niche.

YouTube and MySpace and Bebo and SecondLife aren't the peak of this web2 interjoinedness. They represent the start.

People will look back on these and even earlier prototypes like FriendsReunited as just that - early prototypes; funny cruddy, flakey, brilliant, world-changing

Online has a greater affect on brand engagement than any other medium

Let me say that one more time - online has a greater affect on brand engagement than any other medium. That's according to the IAB's brand engagement study.

James Galpin, director of evaluation, Carat Insight:

"We expected that we would find significant contribution towards brand engagement from internet advertising. However, we never imagined that we would find that the internet would be a more powerful driver of engagement than any other medium we tested, especially on this audience"

Guy Phillipson, IAB CEO:

"This important cross-media study in the car market shows how online drives brand engagement more than any other medium - not just through rich media advertising, but because consumers go on to seek product and information and reviews, too. This study will go a long way to help brand marketers understand how well online performs in the media mix"

24% of UK Internet users regularly access the web from their mobile phones

Surprisingly high figures from the latest comScore Mobile Tracking Study (via Netimperative):

The research shows that 29% of European Internet users regularly access the Web from their mobile phones compared to only 19% in the US.

Of the countries examined, the highest mobile Web penetration is seen in both Germany and Italy (34%), followed by France with 28%, Spain with 26% and the UK with 24%. The U.S. figure of 19% is the lowest of the set.

"In Europe, the mobile Internet appears to mirror the dynamics of the fixed Internet. Google remains strong but the other US-based portals achieve much lower penetration, facing stiff competition from local competitors, in this case the mobile providers, who have the structural advantage of a degree of control over the access point and interface from the mobile phone."

Update: NMA reports:

Over 40.7m people used their phones to browse or download from the mobile internet in Q3 this year, according to the Mobile Data Association (MDA). In July MDA recorded 13m users, but by September the number had increased to 14m. The MDA cited improved download speeds as a key factor in the growth in usage. Google topped the list of sites most accessed via mobiles, followed closely by chat sites.

Better viral marketing through genetics

Leland Maschmeyer on better viral marketing through genetics:

I just finished reading The Self Gene by Richard Dawkins and, naturally it got me thinking about viral marketing.

Dawkins got me thinking about some simple rules that we can use to help our ideas become more viral. If we pull from the 6 basic elements [genes have to survive and evolve], maybe we can create a some basic questions to ask about an idea/execution to ensure it’s a better viral efforts:

1. Longevity – "Is the idea simple and meaningful (salient maybe?) enough for people to remember?"

2. Speed of Replication – "How long does it take for a person retell, physically copy, imitate, pass along, etc the idea?"

3. Accuracy of Replication – "Is it easy to copy the exact idea?"

4. Survival Machines – "Is there a support structure that protects and/or nurtures the survival of the idea?" A good example of this is You-tube which has a embed function and a send-to-friend function for its "memes". Some sub questions would be, "Does the copying of an idea promise any benefits to the copier?" (Think of the promise of heaven in religions) or "Does the failure to copy an idea threaten the copier in anyway?" think of the promise of hell in religions or of a chain letter that threatens bad luck on you if not sent to 10 people.)

5. Crossing over affinity "an the idea live in combination with other ideas or must it stand alone unvaried?"

I think these questions are much more helpful than asking, "Is it funny enough that people would want to pass it to their friends?"

Web 2.0

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Two in three UK households on broadband by end of 2008

From informitv:

The proportion of households in the UK with broadband is expected to double in three years, with 64% of homes on broadband by the end of 2008. The first geographic forecast suggests that the number of broadband lines in the country will rise to over 18 million.

The forecast shows that the remote rural areas where penetration is lowest today will grow fastest and catch up with the rest of the country to some extent.

The highest take-up will continue to be in prosperous areas of the south east of England. In parts of Surrey, where household take-up is predicted to be highest, over 90% of homes will be on broadband.

Search specialists feel the heat as media agencies muscle in

In today's New media Age:

The search market is facing a period of turmoil as media agencies start to flex their muscles to draw clients away from pure search agencies.

This week saw search specialist Latitude lose Saga, Asda and key client Alliance & Leicester, which had been with Latitude for six years, to media agency Carat Digital.

Search now accounts for 33.5% of billings for the top five media agencies listed in this year's NMA Top 100 Interactive Agencies guide.

A Video History of YouTube

Slate have just published a great video history of YouTube, if you need bringing up to speed. And then of course, there's this: